Dragon's Lair Fans - Arcade Lifestyle

General Chat => Arcade Lifestyle => Topic started by: tribalredfox on July 21, 2005, 09:21:17 PM

Title: Tron Questions
Post by: tribalredfox on July 21, 2005, 09:21:17 PM
I have an old Tron cab in pretty bad condition.  Many, many parts are missing.  Mine just has the wood components.  The lower 3" is heavily water-logged, the adhesive is coming apart everywhere, the screws have destroyed the wood and hence aren't holding anything together, etc.  No control panel, marquee, internal hardware, etc.  The only thing I have is the coin door in poor shape and the curved plastic that is directly over where control panel should be.  As you can tell, it's a long-haul project.

I need some help with some basic things.  Measurements mostly.

Can someone post some high-res pics of the retainers for the marquee?    Looking at what's already posted at https://www.dragonslairfans.com it seems that they are L brackets, right?  What dimensions are those?

Also, is the marquee a standard 8" because I only measure 7" 13/16ths between the top board on the cabinet and the lower part of the marquee board?  It actually seems like it should be somewhere between 6 1/2 - 7" high.

So I need info on marquee retainers and the dimensions of the marquee itself.

Can anyone help me out with this?
Title: Tron Questions
Post by: DarthNuno on July 21, 2005, 10:19:25 PM
Hi tribalredfox and welcome to this forum  8)

I'll post some pictures for you this WE, no problem  :)

By the way, do you have pictures of your Tron ? I would like to see it  8)
Title: Tron Questions
Post by: tribalredfox on July 22, 2005, 03:20:38 AM
I don't have any pictures yet.  My digital camera is draining batteries very quickly.  Rechargable batteries last one, maybe two pictures without the flash on and the batteries are drained.  I'm trying to keep as much money for the Tron cabinet so it will be awhile until I buy a new camera.

I can tell you more about it though.  I replaced the bottom board.  I filed the side and front panel up about an inch.  I had no choice there... the wood was coming apart in my hand!  Luckily, the wood that's there is strong enough to support itself and the cabinet isn't sitting any lower than it should.  So I'm working on options on how to fix the bottom.  I could use Bondo, wood plastic, etc but I don't want to have the bottom panel attached to the side and front panel.  It might be the only choice though and I don't really see an reason why I'd ever have to, or want to, take the cabinet apart again any ways.

The cabinet is being reassembled in parts.  This stage is the MAME stage, where I'm just going to put my wife's computer in there.  Then I'm going to have to find a job again (I just moved to Austin, TX from Tampa, FL) before I can work on replacing original parts.

Unfortunately, I think this will take me a few years to make perfect again.  I have absolutely no internals currently.  I started out with the power supply but since the entire bottom of the board had been drenched, I decided not to take any chances on something that could be dangerous.

For the Mame part, I'm making a control panel that will enable two players with six buttons each.  Because the area is so limitted in there, the CP will have to come out a bit.  During the second phase (replacing original parts) I'll simply move the CP I made to another MAME machine.

So for this first stage I just want the cabinet to be structurally intact and visually appealing.  I'll probably prime it some unusual color, like yellow.  When I replace original parts, I will paint it over it with the black color it originally had.
Title: Tron Questions
Post by: DarthNuno on July 24, 2005, 10:27:49 AM
My God, your cab seems to be in a very bad condition  :cry:
Hopefully, you really want to restore it  :P
If I understand well, you'll use a mame to emulate Tron ? Do you still have the original control panel ? If not, you'll able to find one on ebay, or you can built a new one, but please don't use your Tron cabinet for playing others games than Tron... :? ... I mean don't do a Mame cab :?

Actually, I still have a monitor problem on my Tron  :oops: , and I'm working on my Dragon's Lair cab (  :roll:  ) ... so  ... here's the cab, waiting it's turn  8)

(https://www.dragonslairfans.com/tron/trp1.jpg)

The pictures requested on high res :

(https://www.dragonslairfans.com/tron/trp2.jpg)

You can see one of the  two retainers marquee fixed...

(https://www.dragonslairfans.com/tron/trp3.jpg)

The two screws aren't tight. But if I turn the two screws, the retainer goes up & will maintain the marquee.

(https://www.dragonslairfans.com/tron/trp4.jpg)

picture of the top retainer ( the other pieces are retainers for glass,bezel )

(https://www.dragonslairfans.com/tron/trp5.jpg)

... and the retainer profil view

The exact size for the top retainer is 58,6cm length ( european system metric  :roll:  )

The marquee glass is 58,3 cm ( or 58,55 cm with the left/right plastic border ) x 20 cm

Hope it can helps  :idea:

Let me know if you need other pictures or mesures.

PS : sorry for my poor english  :oops:
Title: Tron Questions
Post by: tribalredfox on July 24, 2005, 11:58:45 AM
I have to emulate Tron until I can get the control board, power supply, control panel, etc.  It's a very hard game to play on MAME without a spinner.

I had a few parts laying around for a control panel so I'm making one that will fit in the cabinet but it's not a permanent solution at all.  As soon as I have money then I'll buy a control panel off of ebay to replace the original one.  The control panel I'm making though will be pretty cool in my opinion.  It's going to be split into two parts so I can play with another person with my own control panel half in my lap and the other person will be able to do the same.  It uses a USB controller interface so I can hook it up to any computer anywhere.  When I get the original Tron control panel I'll use the control panel I made to player arcade fighting games and Neo Geo games.

Since my wife's computer is never used I'm just putting it in the cabinet temporarily until I get all the replacement parts.  No use in having a big cabinet that has no internals and a computer that's never used when I could just put them together for awhile.

I noticed that your Tron has a coin access door under the coin door.  I wonder if that was added later as mine doesn't have one.  Also, I think your coin door has been replaced as mine looks fairly different and I verified that mine's original.

I'll see if I can figure out what's wrong with your monitor if you can tell me more about what's wrong with it.  I'm not much of an electrician but I've fixed a number of TVs and monitors (and blown up a few as well).  A new one, I think it's a 19", would run between $200-$250 without shipping.  Obviously, shipping will kill if you do it from happcontrols.com or a site like that.  suzo.com might have one though.  I don't know because I don't have an account with them.

Thanks a lot for the pics and measurements.  Are the retainers all plastic and at 90 degree angles?
Title: Tron Questions
Post by: DarthNuno on September 08, 2005, 04:53:43 PM
Hey tribalredfox,

Sorry for late answer  :cry:  but I spend so many time on the construction my gaming room, and of course, the restoration of my Dragon's Lair cab  :roll:  :wink:

What is the status of your Tron restoration ?